Memories...

There's a "top 100 songs the year you graduated from high school" meme that's going around in the blogosphere amongst those of us who are searching for things to write about other than what we're having for dinner tonight. And while I'm not going to reproduce the entire list here or tell you which ones I loved/tolerated/hated, let me just show you the top ten songs from my graduation year, 1979:

1. My Sharona, The Knack
2. Bad Girls, Donna Summer
3. Le Freak, Chic
4. Da Ya Think I'm Sexy, Rod Stewart
5. Reunited, Peaches and Herb
6. I Will Survive, Gloria Gaynor
7. Hot Stuff, Donna Summer
8. Y.M.C.A., Village People
9. Ring My Bell, Anita Ward
10. Sad Eyes, Robert John

Hmm...what do you think we were doing that year? Note that Robert John's "Sad Eyes" is #10. You knew that all that fun couldn't last, didn't you?

I was at a Barak Obama rally today (stay with me here, this will eventually be music related, which is not to minimize the importance of Barak) and ran into a friend who just came from a sale of the people who used to own Record Service. Remember when there used to be independent record stores, before Borders/B&N/iTunes? Oh, yeah!

Well, I hustled on over to the sale, where I picked up a bunch of CDs for $2 each. And at such prices, I felt free to do a little exploration. So I picked up a Hootie and the Blowfish album, their third I think, titled "Musical Chairs," which came out in 1998. For reasons I will explain in a moment, this band had completely slipped under my radar at the time (unlike every single one of the songs on my graduation year's top ten!). I recognized the name, I thought I might like them, but I was pretty clueless, really. So I bought the CD. And loved it!

Hootie and the Blowfish, as it turns out, falls into that abyss of bands who happened to be popular either when I was a) in graduate school, and either busy trying to find a cure for autoimmune diseases, working on my thesis, or playing pickup softball and drinking in bars after the softball games; or b) into my Chicago folk-music phase; of c) having babies and learning the words to Raffi songs. There's really just this huge black hole of my knowledge of popular music, and I blame it all on graduate school and having babies.

Anybody else have a similar experience? Come on, you know you do. You don't have to have gone to graduate school or had babies to respond, you know!

The Cat Empire: Two Shoes are not enough

Those poor Genevians who witnessed me practicing musical phonetic punctuation the other day may have seen me dancing down the street the other day with a huge smile on my face. It's not my fault; I just downloaded an album by an Australian band called The Cat Empire, and if they don't make you want to move then you're dead.

This album, called Two Shoes, recorded in Cuba, is a blend of hip-hop, jazz with fantastic and occasional (but no less terrific) keyboards, Latin, and reggae--with smart lyrics sung in an endearing Australian accent.

Here's an excerpt from one of their songs, "Party Started,"

"Chillin in the sun
With tea and milk and honey
Tea and lamingtons
That’s my idea of fun
But I do enjoy the odd occasional bottle of rum
As we learnt in the songs that I have previously sung
When its done with fruit juice at a barbecue in the sun
If the afternoon is begun with kangaroo and capsicum."

Well anybody who can find a rhyme for "capsicum" is worth a listen, don't you think?

Even my newly-turned 14 year old son and his friend liked it! I'm telling you, these guys are great. It's not writing music, but it's music to celebrate by when you've finished writing a tough passage and you want to dance around your office. It's guaranteed to make you feel happy.

The organ grinder of Geneva

I love this guy and his cats (there's one, sleeping on a tray to the side, that's a little harder to see.) He works the streets in downtown Geneva nearly every weekend. He was kind enough to stop for me so that I could take this little video.

Note the cats' complete nonchalance, as well as the many people who hurried by without even a second glance. Not all of them, but a lot. And those white, skinny faceless mannekins in the window display in the background.

I should see if he speaks English. I bet he has some interesting stories to tell!